Re: 64 - is this the only number that is both a sq and a cube?

From: Bob Silverman (pubkeybreaker_at_aol.comstuff)
Date: 09/21/04 

Date: 21 Sep 2004 00:52:48 GMT

Re: Schooling

When I took pre-calculus in High school,
the course included introduction to limits,
complete with epsilon-delta proofs, induction,
[with lots of exercises], vectors (i.e. dot and
cross products, vector algebra etc), intro to
linear algebra, etc. AS PART OF THE REGULAR
COURSE MATERIAL. It covered an elementary
intro to abstract algebra [at a low level], theory
of equations, etc. To prepare for the study of
differential calculus, we learned about sin(x)/x
as x-->0, the binomial thm etc. etc. It was one
of the best math courses I ever had { and I
later got to take complex variables from Ahlfors
and algebra from Birkhoff} and was taught by an excellent, cancel that, SUPERB
teacher.

My son is now taking the same course, in the
same grade, in the same school, and the textbook
is so watered down it makes me want to puke.
The book includes much too much material that
should have been covered in the first two years
of algebra. And this is *supposedly* an "honors"
course.

My graduating class had 8 National Merit scholars
in a class of a little over 400. Recent classes
have had only one or two in classes that are 50%
bigger. Yet there are 3 to 4 times as many students
on the "high honor roll" as there were when I was
in high school.

Barf. Puke. Retch.

Here is something telling. Sometime in the mid 80's
my high school took first place, in the entire country,
in a calculus competition. At the same time, the
wrestling team won its 7th or 8th state title.
The latter was front page news and two whole
pages of the sports section was devoted to it.
There was a whole article devoted to one of
the wrestlers. The story about the calculus team
got about 1 column somwhere in the back pages......

Can you say "screwed up priorities"? I wrote
a letter complaining about the bias. I was the
perfect person to do so, because I was also on the
wrestling team when I was in high school; I could
not be accused of bias. The newspaper printed
the letter, but it got NO reaction.

Note: The calculus teacher, Joe Ford, was superb,
and his teams were consistently in the top 10
nationwide.

"You can lead a horse's ass to knowledge, but you can't make him think."

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